Author Archives: Will Shelton

It’s hard to find a good comparison to this football season in Tennessee’s history. That’s fitting, given there is no comparison to the way the virus has impacted this year. A good question for all of us, and one we struggled with on the podcast after the Arkansas loss, is how to even discuss the role of the virus in this team’s struggles. Every team in America is dealing with it, so while it may be a unique challenge for some players – most notably Harrison Bailey’s situation in trying to get a freshman quarterback ready – it’s a shared experience in college football. I think if we ended this year with a bunch of random results, it would now feel almost natural to shrug our shoulders and say, “Who knows, let’s see what happens next year.”

But Tennessee’s results, after the first ten quarters, haven’t been random. They’ve been, so far, among some of the worst we’ve ever seen in Knoxville: the Vols and their offense continue to be operating at historic lows, with #23 Auburn and two Top 6 teams still to come. The narrative of the season, so far, has been that when the Vols faced adversity, they fell down a steep hill.

Even last season, as unique as it felt at the time, found some natural comparisons to 1988. To be fair, that’s a comparison we wanted to make, because of what it led the Vols to the following season and beyond. That team was resilient, not just in the second half of the season, but in the second half of games:

• Down 21-17 at half vs South Carolina, won 41-21
• Down 13-3 at half at Kentucky, won 17-13
• Down 22-9 in the fourth quarter vs Indiana, won 23-22

The fall from where we were at halftime of the Georgia game this year to where we are now is dizzying. Tennessee scored 12 touchdowns in the first 10 quarters this season. They’ve scored four touchdowns in the last 14 quarters, one of those down 42-10 to Alabama. It feels like, “We could beat Georgia,” has become, “Can we beat anybody?”

Here are Tennessee’s offensive and defensive numbers from the first and second half this season (stats via SportSource Analytics):

Rushing Off.	1H	2H
Attempts	127	113
Yards	517	346
YPC	4.07	3.06
Rushing Def.	1H	2H
Attempts	124	128
Yards	438	525
YPC	3.53	4.1
Passing Off.	1H	2H
Completions	52	45
Attempts	83	80
Completion %	62.7	56.3
Yards	586	462
YPA	7.06	5.78
Passing Def.	1H	2H
Completions	57	57
Attempts	86	82
Completion %	66.3	69.5
Yards	680	805
YPA	7.9	9.82

Getting just three yards per carry in the second half while allowing nearly ten yards per pass attempt in the second half is still jarring to look at. The Vols have not allowed a touchdown pass in the first half…and have allowed seven in the second half.

Why does this team struggle to respond to adversity, especially when last year’s team was so good at it? Does the virus play a role here in any human being’s ability to respond, especially an 18-22 year old who did not sign up for any of this in their SEC football experience? If so, how much?

When the conversation shifts so far from random to bad football, it’s simply hard to find the right words to call it much of anything else. As we learned last season, there is certainly still time. The Vols still have meaningful opportunities left this season if they can play meaningful football themselves. Perhaps Harrison Bailey will provide some hope, or a healthy Jarrett Guarantano will find the same magic he delivered at Auburn two years ago.

We would settle for weirdness, because we would at least understand it. In an uncertain year, will these last four games contain any surprises? And can Tennessee find a way to make any of them go our way?

In the third quarter against Alabama, Jarrett Guarantano hit Jalin Hyatt for 48 yards down the sideline. It should’ve been more, but he was ruled out of bounds.

That’s the only play of 40+ yards the Vols have all year.

Mike Leach and Mississippi State have two. Kentucky and Vanderbilt have three. It goes all the way up to Alabama and Ole Miss, who have ten each.

Not only do the Vols struggle to hit home runs, they struggle to get on base. Here’s a look at big plays in SEC games from the Tennessee offense the last five years, in 10 yard increments broken down per game:

	10+	Per Game	20+	Per Game	30+	Per Game	40+	50+
2020	63	10.5	21	3.5	9	1.5	1	0
2019	99	12.4	40	5	18	2.3	9	6
2018	84	10.5	36	4.5	21	2.6	11	3
2017	85	10.6	28	3.5	11	1.4	6	2
2016	141	17.6	55	6.9	24	3	13	2

Tennessee’s offense wasn’t lights out last season, but they could hit home runs between Jennings, Callaway, and some longer runs from Ty Chandler and Eric Gray that just haven’t been there so far this season. This time around, the Vols struggle with just 10+ yard plays, essentially matching the per game average of the woeful 2017 offense, and the 2018 group that ran fewer plays than any team in college football.

Even with Jim Chaney, perhaps a defense-first head coach like Jeremy Pruitt is never going to live by the big play. But SEC football has changed so fast around him, it feels like Tennessee is getting left behind. Before we even talk about what a good job by the defense would be against a team like Texas A&M or Auburn, we need some baseline understanding of how many points the offense would need to score just to have a chance.

Last year in conference play, Tennessee averaged 20 points per game. Again, not great, but not terrible considering 37.5% of our SEC games are Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. At 20 points per game, the Vols finished ninth in scoring in league play. Ole Miss came in fifth at 26 points per game.

This year, with everything being conference play, Tennessee is holding that average at 20.7 points per game, obviously boosted by the first two weeks of the season. In 2020, that’s only good for 12th in the SEC. Now the top half of the league averages at least 28 points per game, with what feels like a break between Auburn at #7 (28.3) and South Carolina at #8 (24.8). The non-Vanderbilt teams left on our schedule are averaging 28.3, 33.3 and 42.4 points per game, all vs SEC defenses.

One more note here: in offensive SP+ rating, the Vols are 97th nationally at 24.2 (points per game against the average defense). If you look at every Tennessee offense in SP+ since 2005, those 24.2 projected points per game in 2020 rank the same as the Clawfense’s 19.3 projected points per game in 2008:

Year	Offensive SP+	Rank
2020	24.2	97
2019	27.8	73
2018	33.4	38
2017	25.8	83
2016	39.9	15
2015	35.7	31
2014	31	53
2013	29.2	63
2012	42.6	9
2011	27	61
2010	30.5	44
2009	32.9	29
2008	19.3	97
2007	38.4	17
2006	35.9	12
2005	23.7	75

Pruitt and his staff may not want to die via turnovers, whether interceptions downfield or the quarterback getting hit more often waiting for guys to get open. But if the Vols can’t land more explosive plays, I’m not sure there’s any other way to live.

Our church has been meeting online and at a minor league baseball stadium the past however many weeks now. We’ve been talking about the wilderness a lot, starting right after Easter, because I think there’s plenty in our current experience that feels at home there. Probably more than we’d like.

It’s been a metaphor I and many others have used for Tennessee going on more than a decade now. This is on pace to be the 13th year the Vols have struggled, in one form or another. But those first couple, you didn’t think we’d have to spend too much time there. For me, it wasn’t until Lane Kiffin left and we replaced him with Derek Dooley that I really thought, “Okay, this is going to take a minute to get figured out.”

Not a while, back then. A minute. A bit, maybe. A year, maybe two, no wait Tyler Bray is awesome, etc.

Then when it didn’t work with Dooley, you knew whoever was next was going to take a few years, at least three. That turned out to be the right calculation, actually, or at least it should’ve been. We could see the Promised Land from 2015 and 2016, we just didn’t get in.

Then when it all fell apart with Butch Jones, we went to a very vulnerable place between John Currie and Greg Schiano, but came out of it with Phillip Fulmer, which at least made me feel better. We knew the day it happened that saying no to Schiano in such a fashion would set the short-term back, not forward. But we appreciated that, in hiring Jeremy Pruitt, it didn’t feel like a move made in the name of damage control.

(Also, I know defending Fulmer is my thing, but for people saying he should get killed for this hire…who else were we getting after that mess? Mel Tucker just took a 49-7 L to Iowa. Kevin Steele hasn’t been hired by anyone else. Wasn’t Pruitt the best we were doing in that moment in time?)

And then we lost to Georgia State. But then it didn’t matter!

But now, it matters again.

You’re going to lose games, some of them badly in one way or another. The hope is you keep those losses far away from each other, and put enough winning between them to not allow those dots to be reasonably connected. Even when Tennessee was blown out by Kentucky earlier this year, there was a hope – especially after watching the first half of the Georgia game and really deep into the third quarter – that it was an isolated incident. Maybe not isolated for Guarantano, but for Tennessee’s progress, which wasn’t far enough down the road to avoid beat down by pick six.

But the way Tennessee struggled against Arkansas – the Vols didn’t just lose, they struggled – draws a line through a lot of things. Reasonably so.

Big picture, these things remain true:

• Tennessee’s talent level has improved and is improving, especially since 2017.
• But it’s not improving nearly as fast as what’s happened at Florida and Georgia since then.
• Tennessee’s SP+ rating is currently lower than at the end of any season since the rating’s inception in 2005.

The Vols are getting better players, but not at the same rate as their biggest rivals – not just Alabama, but Florida and Georgia. The Vols are trying to chase down the rest of the top half of the SEC doing a less talented version of what a lot of them are doing. And right now, the on-field product is as bad or worse, play-for-play, than anything we’ve seen.

We can throw around, “This is the worst I’ve ever seen,” a lot, and it’s usually wrong. But play-for-play, that might be true right now. In May, we compared Tennessee’s preseason SP+ rating to the way the Vols ended in each of the last 15 years, grouping them into tiers. The Vols had a 14.8 (points better than the average team) rating back then, making them most similar to the 2009, 2012, and 2016 (full-season edition) Vols. The common denominator there was having a real chance to win almost every Saturday, which was a good goal for 2020, we thought.

Instead, Tennessee plummeted to a 0.5 SP+ rating this week. In the last 15 years, only Butch Jones’ final season in 2017 comes close, and it’s at 1.2. The next lowest on the list is Jones’ first season at 5.1.

There’s losing to, or even getting blown out by, teams that are much better than you. There’s losing to Kentucky, maybe, as a fluke because you threw consecutive pick sixes. But play-for-play, Tennessee has simply been bad and very bad since halftime of the Georgia game. It’s mostly the offense’s problem, though the defense too is down from their preseason projections. But when you add “hard to watch” to these equations, they don’t get any easier to solve.

Back in the good old days of 2007, I wrote about how curiosity was becoming the dominant emotion with the Vols too often: “Let’s see what happens this week!”, instead of feeling like you should win every single Saturday the way we knew and loved for so long at Tennessee’s peak. But right now, it feels like the only curiosity left surrounds Harrison Bailey, who either can’t get in the game or can’t have the game plan set up to do anything other than hand off.

And sure, the world is super unfair right now. Bailey gets no spring practice and a bunch of contact tracing in the fall. Saturday night the SEC Network shared sentiments from Jeremy Pruitt on not wanting to play young kids before they were ready for fear that it might ruin them, and that he thinks that might be what happened with Jarrett Guarantano in 2017. I don’t love the comparison – JG was a redshirt freshman in 2017 and didn’t beat out Quinten Dormady in fall camp – and sure, maybe don’t give him his first start against Alabama. It’s an idea that might actually be true for Harrison Bailey, but the comparison with Guarantano is off by enough to make you question the entire logic. And if Guarantano can’t go against Texas A&M, I think at this point you clearly have to play Bailey no matter what.

So there’s curiosity about your quarterback, and then curiosity about whether the Vols can just keep it close. Tennessee opened as only a 12-point underdog, and it’s around two touchdowns in SP+ even with Tennessee rated so low. It would be the same against Auburn this week. Statistically, even at a low point, it doesn’t feel impossible. But in the eye test, and after so long, the gut test, it sure can feel that way.

If you’re chasing pageviews, maybe you slap Hugh Freeze’s name in the title up there. But because of the virus, I’m not sure there’s anything that could happen on the field – or even in recruiting – this season to cause Jeremy Pruitt to lose his job, or create significant turnover among the assistants. If the team that showed up against Kentucky and Arkansas – and failed to show up, in so many ways, in the second half – plays A&M, it’s going to lose by a lot more than 12-14 points no matter who’s playing quarterback. And then it’s going to lose that way to Auburn. And no matter what it does against Vanderbilt, least fun of all to Florida.

I do not know how a team that was so resilient in the back half of last year – not just winning six in a row, but playing from behind in every one of them that wasn’t UAB – seems to fold so fast this year. It carries a bit of Derek Dooley’s, “We don’t handle adversity well,” business, with that same silent acknowledgment from the listener that, in year three, whose fault is that?

We have played so many of these games before. And a stiff neck will not get you out of the wilderness any faster.

But perhaps it’s finally become the wrong metaphor. Because I’m afraid, no matter how bad it might get on the field, the virus is going to make it feel more like exile for a minute. Or maybe a bit. Who knows, because who knows where this virus is going. But, as we discussed on our podcast last night, that feels like the dominant question for Tennessee right now: “Where is this going?”, at a time when the virus may not let you go anywhere else.

What do you do in exile? Build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have children. Multiply, do not decrease. Seek the welfare of the city you’ve been exiled to.

And, most painfully, don’t listen to the prophets who tell you this will all be over soon. For Tennessee, in the midst of this virus, I don’t know how realistic that possibility is.

All of that is the context for Jeremiah 29:11, in the six verses that precede it. “For surely I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord, “plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” But sometimes those plans include a period of exile.

No matter how it feels, of course, we’ll still be here. Still trying to figure it out, still learning how to love this team well. Trying to be fruitful and multiply in a harsh season with no easy outs on the horizon. Curiosity, however much is left, will still beat apathy.

But I think one of the most valuable gifts in exile is honesty about the reality of one’s situation. No matter who ultimately leads Tennessee out of exile – Pruitt, Fulmer, someone else – or how long it takes, the first step will always be admitting you have a problem. It’s a gift to be able to acknowledge the reality of one’s situation, even when you like it so very little.

We need honesty. Honesty, and basketball.

Go Vols.

For two weeks, we’ve talked about the question of “closing the gap.” What’s the best way to measure that? When it comes on the heels of another big loss to Alabama, the answer is talent.

There are plenty of options – recruiting rankings, draft picks, etc. – but let’s take a look at actual talent on the roster. For that, we turn to the team talent rankings at 247 Sports. I like these not only for giving a look at the entire roster, but because they include transfers and, obviously, don’t count those leaving early for the NFL, which can give a boost to recruiting rankings a year too long.

In team talent, you’ll find a common theme from recruiting: the Vols are 15th in the nation in talent…and seventh in the SEC. But far more important than the ranking is the rating: it’s not just who’s ahead of you, but how far. And looking at the six available years of team talent data tells us quite a bit about the hopes for Tennessee’s past, present, and future.

We use blue chip ratio a lot in recruiting: the percentage of four-and-five-stars per class, noting that national champions always hit 50+%. That’s a number, as you’ll see, the Vols flirt with quite often, and heavily so in Jeremy Pruitt’s classes. But when you’re seventh in the SEC in talent, the conversation for Tennessee can’t just be about getting to 50%.

I used the team talent rankings to calculate a blue chip ratio for the entire roster (the percentage of four-and-five-stars on your roster to three-four-and-five stars). Here’s where Tennessee stands over the last six years:

(If the tables look weird, turn your phone sideways)

Tennessee Roster Blue Chip Ratio

	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020
Tennessee	47.20%	49.30%	39.50%	43.80%	43.40%	42.40%

This makes sense: the Vols had their best teams in 2015 and 2016, infused with the talent from Butch Jones’ 2014 and 2015 recruiting classes. But it dropped off sharply in 2017, even before all the losses, in part due to signing only five blue chip players that February.

Jeremy Pruitt’s first three teams have featured almost identical levels of talent, but right now it skews much younger. Of Tennessee’s 22 seniors, including that 2017 recruiting class, only seven were blue chip recruits: Jordan Allen, Ty Chandler, Jarrett Guarantano, Brandon Kennedy, Trey Smith, Aubrey Solomon, and Savion Williams. The entire calculation will change given the eligibility rules for this season, but in a normal year the Vols would trade off those graduating with the incoming 2021 recruiting class, which currently features 12 blue chip commits and 14 three-stars. If the current class stayed exactly the same, it would give Tennessee a team talent blue chip ratio of 46.1% for next season, the Vols’ best since 2015-16.

So yes, overall it’s going in the right direction and gaps are being closed; next season the Vols should have an overall blue chip level comparable to the best we’ve seen in the post-Fulmer era.

Here’s the problem:

How big is the window of opportunity?

	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020
Georgia	51.90%	52.50%	63.50%	72.70%	70.20%	78.80%
Florida	36.80%	32.40%	35.40%	44.90%	52.70%	58.50%
Tennessee	47.20%	49.30%	39.50%	43.80%	43.40%	42.40%

The Vols are getting closer to the window. But getting through it will be much more difficult now.

In 2015-16, not only were the Vols stocked with both talent and experience to make a move, but Florida and Georgia were unstable. 2015 was Mark Richt’s last year and Jim McElwain’s first, with the Gators in particular low on talent from the end of the Will Muschamp era. McElwain won two division titles but did nothing to change that. Meanwhile Georgia, already a consistent player in the 50+% blue chip ratio game, significantly upped the ante under Kirby Smart.

You can throw out those Richt vs Smart graphics all you want through their first however many games. But the Georgia teams Tennessee is trying to beat right now are way, way more talented than the Richt teams we saw at the end of his tenure.

And Florida is trending that direction as well.

For all of Tennessee’s strengths, some of its greatest weaknesses post-peak have involved bad timing, whether self-inflicted or otherwise. When Florida and Georgia have been vulnerable, the Vols have failed to capitalize:

• 2002: The Vols beat Spurrier in his last game in The Swamp in December 2001 with everything on the line, fumbled it away in Atlanta, but still entered 2002 with Ron Zook at Florida and Mark Richt in year two in Athens. I was a 21-year-old college student, so what did I know then, but as good as the Vols were when I was growing up from 1989-2001, holding the best winning percentage of any SEC team in that run…in 2002 I thought we were getting ready to ascend, specifically because the Gators would be down. Instead, the Vols fumbled 87 times in the rain against Florida, were devastated by injuries, and finished 8-5. Tennessee still tied for the SEC East in 2003 and won it in 2004, but there was no step forward overall. Then…
• 2005: With Urban Meyer in year one at Florida and that read option stuff never going to work in the SEC, Tennessee was ranked third in the preseason AP poll. Florida was 10th. Georgia was 13th. Instead, the Vols mismanaged the quarterback situation and hurt themselves, not unlike this season, with turnovers at the worst possible times. Tennessee went 5-6, and though they rebounded again in 2006 and won the SEC East in 2007, again, no step forward.
• 2010: By far, the low point for the SEC East: Urban Meyer’s last year at Florida saw the Gators go 8-5, Georgia started 1-4 and finished 6-7, and South Carolina won the SEC East for the first and only time at 5-3 in league play. But the Vols were in year one of Derek Dooley. Whoever else you wanted to hire in January 2010, I’m not sure they do any better in year one, and if Kiffin doesn’t leave, maybe we’re on probation later. So more than anything, this one just feels like bad luck, unless of course you’d like to take it back to the, “What if Fulmer doesn’t hire Dave Clawson?” conversation two years before.

And of course, there’s 2015-16. Though the Vols went 3-1 against Florida and Georgia those two years, the damage was done in failing to make the necessary progress overall. Tennessee closed the gap entirely, but getting to 9-4 twice was never going to be enough to get through the window. Tennessee’s recruiting under Butch Jones fell off before he was fired for losing games. The losses to Oklahoma and Florida in 2015 remain the most consequential outcomes for Tennessee in the post-Fulmer era: the Vols built momentum and talent, but in failing to sustain the one lost the other. Florida and Georgia were vulnerable, but the Vols didn’t get to Atlanta, didn’t get through the window even though it was wide open, and will find it much more difficult now. In all those moments of opportunity in the last 18 years, rarely have Florida and Georgia had stability and excellence at head coach the way they do now under Dan Mullen and Kirby Smart. I’ll give you Richt and Meyer from 2006-08, but Georgia went 8-5 in 2009.

And here’s the thing: Tennessee still won the SEC East in 2007! We used to talk about “win the SEC East every three years” like it was settling, as if Florida and/or Georgia was always going to struggle. But when the Dawgs and Gators have it together – and they do now – Tennessee is doing a good job just to get in the fight. Georgia still has the talent advantage on both, certainly. But the Vols were two-touchdown underdogs in Athens last month. Florida is +3.5 on Saturday.

Comparison is the thief of joy and a three-touchdown favorite

Of course, here’s our other problem, unique to us in the SEC East:

	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020
Alabama	77.70%	75.30%	84.50%	77.70%	84.50%	84.30%
Georgia	51.90%	52.50%	63.50%	72.70%	70.20%	78.80%
Florida	36.80%	32.40%	35.40%	44.90%	52.70%	58.50%
Tennessee	47.20%	49.30%	39.50%	43.80%	43.40%	42.40%

Gross.

In the first three of those missed opportunity years for Tennessee, Alabama was also unstable: Dennis Franchione left a mess after 2002, Mike Shula was doing what we called a good job at the time in 2005, and in 2010 Alabama wasn’t the monster we know and love just yet, 10-3 with a loss to South Carolina.

By 2015-16 Alabama was the Bama we know and hate, though the Vols had a shot in 2015. But also by then we weren’t measuring success only by the pursuit of national championships ourselves. That’s certainly still true today. So yeah, it’s going to be hard for Tennessee to get to Atlanta when the Vols play Alabama every year and Florida and Georgia don’t. But even if the schedule changed, Tennessee has to close the gap in its own division at a time when the window of opportunity to beat Florida and Georgia is tighter than it’s been at any point in the last decade.

So yes, we shouldn’t be worried about trying to catch Bama right now, unless you’d like to be a crazy person. But here’s one thing that may surprise you: from Saban’s year two in 2008 to the present, Alabama only wins the SEC West 58% of the time. Tennessee shouldn’t worry about being Alabama, but it would certainly be nice to be Auburn or LSU.

But…

	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020
Alabama	77.70%	75.30%	84.50%	77.70%	84.50%	84.30%
Georgia	51.90%	52.50%	63.50%	72.70%	70.20%	78.80%
LSU	66.70%	69.20%	63.40%	64.10%	61.40%	61.30%
Florida	36.80%	32.40%	35.40%	44.90%	52.70%	58.50%
Auburn	57.10%	58.90%	60%	56.40%	58.20%	57.30%
Tennessee	47.20%	49.30%	39.50%	43.80%	43.40%	42.40%

To get there, the Vols need to start thinking of recruiting success as not just hitting 50% in blue chip ratio, but 60%. To get there, the Vols are going to have to win more games. Chickens, eggs, etc.

It’s also been true for Auburn and LSU that, to beat Alabama to Atlanta, you either need a Heisman quarterback (Cam Newton, Joe Burrow), extreme weirdness (four missed field goals, Kick Six), or whatever happened in the Iron Bowl in 2017…when Alabama still won the national championship, same as in 2011.

We often think of the SEC as these six traditional powers. But the program that’s actually been the best comparison to Tennessee these last six years is…

	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020
Alabama	77.70%	75.30%	84.50%	77.70%	84.50%	84.30%
Georgia	51.90%	52.50%	63.50%	72.70%	70.20%	78.80%
LSU	66.70%	69.20%	63.40%	64.10%	61.40%	61.30%
Florida	36.80%	32.40%	35.40%	44.90%	52.70%	58.50%
Auburn	57.10%	58.90%	60%	56.40%	58.20%	57.30%
Texas A&M	53.50%	50.90%	41%	41.20%	50.60%	53.20%
Tennessee	47.20%	49.30%	39.50%	43.80%	43.40%	42.40%

What’s life been like for a Texas A&M fan?

You’ll note that Kevin Sumlin and Jimbo Fisher aren’t recruiting much differently from each other. Sumlin went 11-2 with a Heisman quarterback in 2012. They went 9-4 with seven point losses to two top five teams the next year, Johnny Football’s last. After that, as you know: three straight 8-5’s, followed by a 7-5 and a coaching change. Jimbo’s first two years: 9-4, 8-5.

Without the Heisman quarterback, Texas A&M is 2-4 against Auburn, 1-5 against LSU, and winless against Alabama.

Le’ts give Sumlin a pass on losing close games to the great teams from the state of Mississippi in 2014. But in addition to struggles against traditional powers, they also lost to #24 Ole Miss and Louisville in 2015, to unranked teams from the Magnolia State and Kansas State in 2016, and famously blew an enormous lead to UCLA to open the 2017 season before losing to Dan Mullen’s unranked Bulldogs again.

This is the plight of A&M under Sumlin without the Heisman QB: it’s not just about not catching Alabama, it’s 3-9 against Auburn and LSU…and also not being good/talented enough to create comfortable separation from the rest of the league.

Now, perhaps Jimbo is good enough to make up that difference; we’re about to find out. The Aggies lost a close game to Georgia last season, and just beat the Gators last month. Of his ten losses at A&M, only one – at Mississippi State in 2018 – was to an unranked, non-traditional power. And, of course, eight of the others were to Top 10 teams. If Jimbo earns them real progress, A&M can make the leap – not to Bama, but to Auburn and LSU. And though they may go through the Vols next week to prove that point, overall it would be good news for the kind of argument Jeremy Pruitt is trying to build here too.

How much separation on the rest of the SEC in the present?

Here’s the entire league for reference:

	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020
Alabama	77.70%	75.30%	84.50%	77.70%	84.50%	84.30%
Georgia	51.90%	52.50%	63.50%	72.70%	70.20%	78.80%
LSU	66.70%	69.20%	63.40%	64.10%	61.40%	61.30%
Florida	36.80%	32.40%	35.40%	44.90%	52.70%	58.50%
Auburn	57.10%	58.90%	60%	56.40%	58.20%	57.30%
Texas A&M	53.50%	50.90%	41%	41.20%	50.60%	53.20%
Tennessee	47.20%	49.30%	39.50%	43.80%	43.40%	42.40%
South Carolina	31.40%	30%	25.70%	32.90%	31.60%	33.80%
Arkansas	23.30%	24%	26.20%	20.50%	25.30%	25.60%
Kentucky	17.20%	15.10%	20%	18.20%	18.90%	23.80%
Ole Miss	32.80%	38.70%	35.10%	23.90%	22.80%	23.30%
Mississippi St	20%	18.30%	21.90%	27.80%	27.20%	22.90%
Missouri	12.20%	13.40%	10%	7.80%	9.90%	9.60%
Vanderbilt	10.10%	10.80%	12.20%	11.60%	6.90%	5.60%

So this is Tennessee at the present: the lowest team in the top half of the league, trying to gain ground while its three biggest rivals are on fire. But not so much better than most of the rest of the league – including Kentucky and Arkansas – to expect victory outright. As we’ve said, turn it over three straight drives and get two ran back for touchdowns, and Kentucky ain’t the only team in this league that will blow you out. And while it might be of comfort to see Vanderbilt back in the basement by themselves, Kentucky has increased its talent level in a way that suggests they’re not going back down there with them.

Tennessee is making progress, no doubt. The Vols are closing the gap. But when it comes to Tennessee’s biggest rivals, the window of opportunity is tighter than we’ve seen it in the last decade. So yes, we’re closer to the window. But right now, it’s going to be harder to squeeze through.

The best way to get there is to get better players, which is a path Tennessee is on. To do that, the Vols need to win games. Momentum is a real and dangerous thing with a long lifespan. And that, for a thousand reasons, makes this date with Arkansas of great importance. The Vols will get their chance to test themselves against teams that don’t have an 80% blue chip roster in the second half of this season. But before we can get to A&M, Auburn, and Florida, we need to get past Arkansas. Tennessee is making progress, but nothing will be easy…including tomorrow night.

There’s no escaping the kinds of conversations we have after a loss like that. Losing to Alabama by 30+ points was, sadly, one of the more normal things about yesterday in Neyland Stadium; the Vols have now lost the last five in this series by 39, 38, 37, 22, and 31. When it happens in your coach’s third year, you have to ask about progress. When the coach is asked about progress, he has to say we’ve made some. When fans hear the coach say we’ve made some, we go back to that list of scores, rinse repeat.

We could have painful conversations about how to narrowly define that progress against Alabama (did you know 17 points for the Tennessee offense is tied for the second-most the Vols have scored in regulation in this rivalry since the seven game winning streak ended in 2001?!?! See, you don’t want to have this conversation.)

But it’s more helpful, especially here at the bye week, to take the most obvious lesson of 2020: we’re not ready to measure progress primarily by what we do against Alabama and Georgia.

This was a valid question at the start of the year, and possibly one with an answer we liked at halftime of the Georgia game. Three turnovers made it swing hard the other way, but Tennessee’s inability to move the ball at all would’ve left us with the same answer either way. Closer, maybe, but not ready to win without courting weirdness and perfection. Against Alabama, same answer, only more obvious.

And part of not being ready to measure ourselves against those two is also being the sort of team that can in no way turn it over on three consecutive possessions and have two of them ran back for touchdowns against anybody. Do that against Arkansas and maybe even Vanderbilt, and we’ll get blown by again same as Kentucky did.

But it’s also true, here in year three, that we shouldn’t be measuring progress primarily by what we do against the SEC East’s second tier either. That measurement was very important last year, and the Vols passed the test. Not with enough flying colors to make them bulletproof against that group, as we’ve seen. But whatever has become of our history and our culture, none of us will get where we want to go if we only value what happens against Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina, and Vanderbilt.

You can’t make it only about beating the second tier in year three here. And we’re clearly not ready to make it about beating Alabama or Georgia.

That leaves us with the space between: isn’t the best way to measure progress this year by what the Vols do against teams like Texas A&M, Auburn, and Florida? Wasn’t that true at the beginning of the year, only skewed by the schedule that gave us Georgia and Alabama first?

If so, good news: here come those games.

Tennessee’s schedule has, for as long as I’ve been alive, been light on November. It’s what happens when you traditionally play Kentucky and Vanderbilt to close the year, had Ole Miss in there before divisional play, then added South Carolina on Halloween weekend and Missouri in early November after that. Since divisional play began in 1992, the Vols have played only 16 ranked teams in November/December in the regular season. That’s 16 in 29 seasons. Six of those are non-conference foes from 2005 and earlier; Tennessee doesn’t schedule a marquee non-conference opponent in November anymore. And the Vols haven’t faced a Top 10 opponent in November since 2013.

Playing a ranked opponent in November/December is something that happens basically every other year on average, when the Vols have caught Kentucky or Missouri in an up cycle, or a late-season SEC West rotating opponent like LSU in 2017 or Auburn in 2013. It’s aggressively normal for the fate of our season to be decided by what happens in September and October, and if the fates are unkind, we talk about playing youth and getting ready for next year.

But not this time, at all.

Now, the Vols will get Arkansas (receiving votes), #8 Texas A&M, Auburn (receiving votes), Vanderbilt, and #10 Florida. Not only will these be the most meaningful opportunities of the season, they’ll be the most meaningful outcomes for the future.

In year one, Jeremy Pruitt’s Vols gave themselves a chance to do something memorable when they beat #12 Kentucky, then got blown out by Missouri and Vanderbilt. In year two, Jeremy Pruitt’s Vols dug themselves quite the ditch in the first half of the year, then created their own meaning in a six-turned-eight-game winning streak. Those wins were incredibly meaningful. But the bar here is still higher than the teams Tennessee beat in that run last year.

The bar isn’t Alabama and Georgia, not yet. But if you want to clear that one, we need better players. Best way to get better players is to win games. In 2020, I don’t think anyone should be on the hot seat; these aren’t, “Should he be fired?” games. But they might control the speed of Tennessee’s progress in the future. How fast we can start measuring ourselves against the Tide and Dawgs will depend on how quickly we can get more of those players.

The Vols should play youth if it helps them win now, not next year. Because right now, plenty of real live progress is left on the the table for this team, and plenty of more winnable games that could still make for some of the better memories we’ve had around here in a long time. Can they take care of business against Arkansas in a game that’s suddenly so much more dangerous? Then what can they do in search of their first Top 10 win since 2006 when that Top 10 opponent isn’t Georgia or Alabama, as the Dawgs and Tide represent nine of the last ten Top 10 opponents we’ve faced?

Can they give themselves a chance to get Florida at the end of the year?

You’re going to get some answers in the second half of this year, and they will be more meaningful than the answers we’ve heard already. I don’t know if we’ll like them or not. But it makes a lot more sense to judge these Vols by what they do against A&M, Auburn, and Florida than what they did against Alabama and Georgia.

I think these next five will be the most meaningful set of games for Jeremy Pruitt yet. It’s valuable for the future. But it’s also still incredibly valuable for the present. Progress, meaning, and memories are still out there for this team to have. And if they get them, the Vols will give themselves a better chance to make memories against the Tide next time.

Credit Pruitt for the winning streak last year. Credit Bama for being Bama. Progress for the Vols is somewhere between.

And it’s still out there in the present, not the future.

Two weeks after facing one of the best defenses we’ve seen since playing both LSU and Alabama in 2011, the Vols get one of the best offenses we’ve seen in the last 15 years. The Crimson Tide are number one in offensive SP+ this year, and their 48.0 rating puts them in elite company among offenses the Vols have faced in the last 15 years.

In SP+, here are the 10 best offenses the Vols have seen since 2005. What have Tennessee defenses been able to do against units like this? Considering what the Vols have been since 2005, the answer is usually not much…but there is one sliver of hope if you want it.

(Full chart at the bottom of the post)

10-9. 2013 & 2012 Alabama

The A.J. McCarron Tide teams had no trouble with Sal Sunseri’s defense in 2012, then dominated in Butch Jones’ first year as well: 44 points in 2012, 45 points in 2013.

8. 2018 Georgia

The Dawgs led 24-0 after the first drive of the third quarter, but Tennessee’s defense forced consecutive stops to get it close again at 24-12. Georgia overwhelmed the defense on the following drive, then used a short field via fumble to get the final seven points in a 38-12 win.

7. 2015 Arkansas

Of the four games the 2015 Vols lost, all by one possession, the most honest defeat came to an 8-5 Arkansas team with three one possession losses of their own. The Hogs weren’t sexy, but they were ruthlessly efficient with Brandon Allen and Alex Collins. They only scored 24 points against us, but piled up 494 yards, turned away twice inside the 10 yard line late with a missed field goal and a fourth down stop.

5a/5b. 2013 Auburn & 2013 Oregon

The participants in the 2010 BCS title game were plenty good three years later. The Ducks Marcus Mariotaed the Vols in week two, going for a ridiculous 59 points and 687 yards. The Tigers made for a more compelling football game later in the season, thanks in part to a pick six just before halftime that pulled the Vols within seven at 27-20. But Tennessee would be outscored 28-3 from that point on.

4. 2019 Alabama

Most of these numbers belong to Tua Tagovailoa, who was of course knocked out of the Tennessee game then lost for the year the next month against Mississippi State. But the 2019 Tide are the only offense on this list to gain less than 400 yards against the Vols, and join 2015 Arkansas as the only ones to score less than 38 points. If you’re looking for hope, this is the best available option this week.

3. 2020 Alabama

Stay tuned.

2. 2007 Florida

Tim Tebow’s Heisman season included a one possession game and the Vols with the ball with five minutes to play in the third quarter. And then the Gators scored 31 unanswered points, first via an Arian Foster fumble returned for a score, ultimately winning 59-20 with 554 yards of offense…which was a whole lot worse in 2007 than it sounds today.

1. 2018 Alabama

For those of us wondering if Tua was as good as advertised before our first encounter, the answer was an emphatic yes: 58 points and 545 yards, and Bama hit 51 points with 13 minutes to play in the third quarter. If you’re looking for the worst case scenario Saturday, it’s this.

While the 2020 Tide offense isn’t quite at 2018 Tua levels yet, it’s also helpful that the 2020 Vol defense has come a long way from 2018. The thing that’s been hardest for me to remember this week is Tennessee’s performance against South Carolina and Missouri. For the moment, the Vols still have the second best defense in the SEC in SP+; it sure looked like it in the first half against Kentucky.

Any best case scenarios for the Vols, in general, include some version of, “Let’s see what happens when we quit turning it over,” especially on consecutive drives. It’s too much to ask this Vol defense to stop Alabama, especially when Georgia’s all-world defense just tried and failed. But we’ve already seen enough of a blueprint in this matchup last year. Tua was 11-of-12 before he got hurt, the one incompletion a costly red zone interception. But once he went out, Tennessee’s defense kept the Vols in the game with a third down sack, forcing a missed Alabama field goal, forcing and getting a 3rd-and-10 stop, then getting a 3rd-and-6 stop after a holding call gave Bama 2nd-and-14.

You’re not going to stop these guys often, so if you get them in third-and-long, you’ve got to make it count. The Crimson Tide lead the nation in third down conversions at 61.9%, in part because they’re so good on first and second down. How much can Tennessee’s defense take off from that number?

SP+ likes Bama to score 37 points on Saturday; no joke, Tennessee’s defense could give up 30+ and still feel like they did a pretty good job. They’ll need something from the offense, of course; it’s a good week for the 2018 Auburn gameplan, with Tennessee’s receivers winning one-on-one balls deep down the sideline. I don’t know who’s going to play the most number of snaps at quarterback for Tennessee, but it was Jarrett Guarantano on that day two years ago, so perhaps there’s something in this particular matchup that suits him a little more than what he’s seen the last two weeks.

This is a historically great Alabama offense. Can a relatively good Tennessee defense, at least in our recent history, get off the field enough times to make it interesting?

Here’s the full chart of the best offenses the Vols have seen in the last 15 years in SP+:

Opponent	SP+ Offense	Pts Allowed	Yds Allowed
2018 Alabama	50.9	58	545
2007 Florida	50.1	59	554
2020 Alabama	48
2019 Alabama	47.7	35	373
2013 Auburn	46.8	55	479
2013 Oregon	46.8	59	687
2015 Arkansas	46.6	24	494
2018 Georgia	45.9	38	441
2012 Alabama	45.7	44	539
2013 Alabama	45.6	45	479

In the last 30 years, 13 Vol quarterbacks have attempted at least 250 passes as a multi-game starter. Right in the middle of that list is Jarrett Guarantano, who has now thrown 753 passes in a Tennessee uniform. The six quarterbacks in front of him are record-setters and/or champions of one kind or another: Manning, Clausen, Ainge, Dobbs, Bray, Kelly. Not far behind him are Tee Martin and Heath Shuler, who started for only two years. And the rest of the list is filled with guys who won, lost, and in some cases re-won the starting job: Matt Simms, Rick Clausen, Justin Worley, and Jonathan Crompton.

It’s Crompton who feels like the closest comparison to Guarantano a lot of times. Where Guarantano has mixed and matched good and bad in his career, Crompton felt like all of the latter before a stunning transformation to the former. He was at the helm of the Clawfense, which guaranteed his numbers would suffer in comparison. And before that Georgia game, now 11 years old, Crompton’s bad in that offense felt worse than anything I’d seen before.

So there’s a temptation, after losing 34-7 to Kentucky in Knoxville, to throw that “accolade” on Guarantano, especially when it follows the second half at Georgia, and Georgia followed up by surrendering 41 points to Alabama. At 753 pass attempts, we have plenty of data on JG. And it can feel like we keep banging our heads against the same wall.

But over the full course of those 753 pass attempts, Guarantano isn’t the worst we’ve ever seen. In fact, he’s among the top five of those thirteen quarterbacks in the stats that cause the most frustration (data via SportSource Analytics and Sports Reference).

In touchdown-to-interception ratio, Guarantano is fifth among those thirteen QBs, behind Shuler, Manning, Bray, and Casey Clausen. Guarantano has 36 touchdown passes to 16 interceptions, adding three to his total in the last six quarters. “He’s just not accurate,” is a common complaint, especially after struggling so mightily on third down early this season. But in completion percentage, Guarantano (61.2%) is fourth on that list behind Manning, Shuler, and Dobbs.

In yards per attempt, a holier grail than many quarterback statistics, Guarantano is fifth behind Manning, Bray, Shuler, and Martin.

And in interceptions per attempt…Guarantano is first. Not as in worst. As in best: Guarantano has thrown 16 interceptions in 753 attempts, firing one on 2.12% of his passes. Heath Shuler threw 12 in 513 attempts, 2.34%. Peyton Manning threw 33 in 1,381 attempts, 2.39%.

Take his entire career or even his entire season this year, and Guarantano’s numbers are solid. So why do we feel like things are so bad?

I think Guarantano’s problems remind me most of the Arian Foster conversation: “He fumbles all the time!” Which wasn’t true. But his fumbles often came at the worst possible times in critical moments: at the goal line against South Carolina in 2005, a scoop and score in the Outback Bowl against Penn State, another against Florida in a one possession game in 2007, inside the five at UCLA in 2008, one more scoop and score at Auburn a few weeks later. That’s five fumbles in four years, but it was enough to plant the idea in the minds of many.

Guarantano doesn’t turn it over all the time; as interceptions go, he turns it over less than any long-term Tennessee starter in at least the last 30 years.

But when he does turn it over, he has a habit of doing it in bunches and bad moments.

I looked up each of his 16 interceptions. I added the first two from his freshman year for completion’s sake, but I wouldn’t judge him too harshly by what he did in 2017. But starting with the Florida game in 2018 – in something that just felt like unique bad luck at the time – you’ll notice a pattern:

Jarrett Guarantano’s Career Interceptions

1. 2017 Alabama: Intercepted in the end zone (Vols down 38-7)

2. 2017 Vanderbilt: First play of the drive (Vols down 35-17)

3-4. 2018 Florida: Strip sack on the opening drive, intercepted at the Tennessee 12 yard line on the next drive to help Florida take a 14-0 lead. Intercepted on the first play of the drive in the third quarter (Vols down 33-6).

5. 2018 Vanderbilt: Last drive of the first half (Vols down 17-0)

6. 2019 Georgia State: Fumble on pass in the flat on the second play of the game (not his fault?), strip sack at midfield on the drive following Georgia State taking a 28-23 lead, sack and interception on the first two plays of the drive when Georgia State led 35-23.

7. 2019 BYU: Third play of the third quarter at the UT 31 yard line

8-9. 2019 Florida: Intercepted in the end zone (Jennings bobbled), then intercepted at midfield, both with Florida leading only 7-0

10. 2019 UAB: Intercepted in the end zone (Vols led 23-0)

11. 2019 Vanderbilt: Intercepted on the opening drive

12-13. 2019 Indiana: Intercepted on the last drive of the first half, then pick-sixed on UT’s second play of the third quarter

14. 2020 Georgia: Strip sack to open the third quarter, interception at the UT 32 three plays later, scoop and score in the fourth quarter

15-16. 2020 Kentucky: Fumble at the Kentucky 26, pick six on the next drive, pick six on the following drive.

Throw in the goal line scoop and score at Alabama last year, and you’ve got a mess here.

Of Guarantano’s 16 interceptions:

• Three in the end zone
• Seven within the first three plays of the drive, which usually means bad field position
• Three pick sixes, all in the last five games

Six different times, Guarantano has been involved with turnovers on consecutive drives: 2018 Florida, 2019 Georgia State, 2019 Florida, 2019 Indiana, 2020 Georgia, and 2020 Kentucky. When it rains, we drown (or become the only team to come back from down 13 with less than five minutes to play all year).

The stakes were higher for Arian Foster, who was surrounded by more talent. You can chicken/egg that sentence. These turnovers don’t all fall at the feet of Jarrett Guarantano, who has taken a ton of punishment over his career and is still seeing his guys struggle with pass protection in front of him.

Guarantano doesn’t throw a lot of interceptions. But he doesn’t throw a lot of harmless ones either. And that has repeatedly put the Vols in bad positions they’re usually not capable of overcoming.

I don’t know that any version of this Tennessee team is capable of overcoming Alabama, though I like their odds better a week before kickoff than I did last year, and they certainly had their chances then. I don’t know for sure what you do after that, or how you feel about Harrison Bailey with no spring practice and little fall camp. At this point in his career, I think it’s best to accept Guarantano for who he is, and what he can and can’t do. He’s actually statistically better at not throwing interceptions than any Tennessee starter of my generation. But when it gets away from him, it really gets away. What does Jeremy Pruitt do at quarterback to keep things from getting away from the Vols this year? We’ll find out more on Saturday.

The thing I keep coming back to most often – “Georgia’s defense is the best in the country” – is, of course, the most hopeful scenario. So maybe don’t trust it yet; trust it a lot if it shows up well against Alabama, which has the best offense in the country. Stay tuned next week when we get to try to solve that problem.

But by the end of the year, that’s the hope: Georgia’s defense is, in fact, not just the best in the nation, but the best we’ve seen in a while.

The last time we saw anything better, via SP+, was 2017 Alabama. (Mis)matched against the anemic Vol offense in Butch Jones’ final season, Tennessee went for 108 total yards at 2.35 yards per play, and zero offensive points. Before then, the last time Tennessee saw a defense who ended up in that neighborhood was 2012 Florida, Will Muschamp’s eventual Sugar Bowl team. The high-powered Vol offense scored 20 points, but had just 4.72 yards per play, their lowest total of the year before imploding at Vanderbilt.

The 2012 Gators ended the year at 6.6 (points allowed vs the average offense) in defensive SP+. 2017 Alabama finished at 5.6. Georgia was at 6.2 before playing the Vols, actually coming down a bit to 7.1.

The Vols gained 214 yards on Georgia last week at 3.40 yards per play. That’s clearly not going to get it done against an elite team, and is just as indicative of the outcome as turning the ball over three times in the second half.

As a result, Tennessee’s defense faced 77 plays, its second-highest total in the last two years. The Vols allowed 44 points (37 for Georgia’s offense), got hurt over the middle, and don’t come out of Athens carrying a world of confidence.

But when you put all the numbers on the table this season, and consider what’s happening around the rest of the league? Pick whichever one makes you feel best, because they both might still be true after the Georgia game:

• Tennessee might have the second best defense in the SEC
• Tennessee might have its best defense in 10+ years

In SP+, both are true right now. Georgia’s otherworldly defense leads the nation at 7.1 in SP+; Ohio State is number two at 14.1, a full seven points behind. The field gets more crowded from there, but among SEC defenses after three weeks and plenty of points:

Team	SP+ Defense	National Rank
Georgia	7.1	1
Tennessee	17.3	13
Auburn	18	18
Florida	19.4	20
Alabama	19.8	22
South Carolina	19.9	23
Missouri	20.5	27
Kentucky	21.2	28
Texas A&M	21.6	29
LSU	22.5	37
Arkansas	26.3	58
Ole Miss	27.7	65
Vanderbilt	27.8	66
Mississippi St	27.9	67

Tennessee’s defensive rating of 17.3 is a hair ahead of last season’s 17.4, spurred on by a fantastic defensive effort in the six-game winning streak to close 2019. That rating was Tennessee’s best of the decade, which isn’t overly shocking; the 2015 Vol defense came closest at 17.8. What is more shocking is the size of the gap between where the Vols are now and where we’ve been in the last few years:

Season	SP+ Defense
2009	15.5
2020	17.3
2019	17.4
2015	17.8
2011	18.8
2014	19.9
2010	23.6
2016	25.2
2017	25.7
2013	26.1
2012	28.3
2018	28.9

In the post-Fulmer era, only Monte Kiffin’s 2009 unit faired better than last year, and this year’s potential. And, in the spirit of having a chance to win every week, that’s a group – 2015, 2019, 2009 – you want to be in. Much better than the company Tennessee’s defense kept in 2016-18.

So maybe we’re not ready to think of the 2020 Vol defense as elite, or even “very good”. But if the numbers hold weight, they’ll play their way into at least that second category.

Which brings us to Kentucky.

Fresh off gaining 157 total yards at 2.96 yards per play against Mississippi State – six interceptions, 24 points – the Cats head to Knoxville. Last year Kentucky scored 13 points against us, seven the year before that. In winning four straight after losing to us in 2019, Kentucky scored 38, 50, 45, and 37 points. In winning three straight after losing to us in 2018, Kentucky scored 34, 56, and 27. Jeremy Pruitt’s defense has done some of its very best work against Kentucky.

Tennessee’s offense has its own demons to exorcise, and I’m not sure how much of that will take place the next two weeks. But if Tennessee’s defense is simply as good as statistically and historically advertised? They can carry the day against a team like Kentucky. And along the way, might start getting a little more credit and higher expectations.